


The Hockey Gods (Must Be Crazy)

by Solarcat



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Actually Mostly Gen, Assorted Other People, But Really Winnipeg, Chicago Blackhawks, Gretzky is Actually Magic, I Should Not Be Allowed to Have Ideas, M/M, Pittsburgh Penguins, Podfic Available, Sidney Crosby What Is Your Face?, With Lots of Liquor, Worship the Hockey Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 23:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solarcat/pseuds/Solarcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sidney Crosby goes for a walk one day, and somehow most of the NHL ends up worshipping a defaced Winnipegian brick. It's all Jonny Toews' fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hockey Gods (Must Be Crazy)

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Sidney Crosby for being such a weirdo, and equal thanks to Kinetikatrue for the quick beta, Midnightbex for being around for me to blame for how I actually wrote this, Isweedan for the enthusiasm, and Zeenell and Jiele for their help with my ~extensive~ research* on the city of Winnipeg.
> 
>  
> 
> *Note: No actual research was performed. Everything in this fic is fake.

If the Penguins had a yearbook, under the heading “least likely to be spontaneous EVER” would be a picture of Sidney Crosby, so he’s kind of expecting all the looks he gets when he decides, on an apparent whim, to walk to the MTS Centre. But then, if there’s anything the Pens are used to, it’s that Sid is kind of weird, all the time, so after several surreptitious checks to make sure he’s remembered to wear a coat (which, seriously, he’s still _Canadian_ , it’s not like he’s forgotten how to dress for winter), they let him go.

He’s got a power bar and a bottled protein shake tucked away in the pockets of the coat (that he _did_ remember, thanks), and the decision to walk to morning skate is not at all spontaneous. It’s all Jonny Toews’ fault, actually.

Sid will not admit that the first blast of far-below-freezing air makes him doubt his purpose momentarily, and honestly consider heading back inside the hotel lobby to wait for the bus, but he soldiers on into the snowy Winnipeg streets. Jonny drew him a map, which is folded up and tucked inside one of his gloves for safekeeping, but the hotel isn’t marked on it, so Sid’s first order of business is to figure out where he is in relation to the little star scrawled at the centre of the page. It turns out, after some walking in the general direction of the arena, that he’s near the lower right corner, so he starts following the shaky, half-faded pen lines toward the star.

Honestly, he didn’t believe Jonny, because clearly Jonny was full of shit with his tales of some kind of mystical shrine to the hockey gods, hidden away in a back alley in _Winnipeg_. But the Hawks are 4-0-0 and the Pens are not, and are in Winnipeg, and for some reason Sid never got rid of the little map Jonny had drawn for him, as if that would prove his case, while he was still sober enough to remember what streets were. So he got up early and bundled up and remembered to bring the power bar and the protein shake.

(“The hockey gods demand a protein shake?” Sid does not believe a word of this, actually, but it’s kind of fucking hilarious because Jonny’s just as serious as ever, despite being so drunk he’s listing about twenty degrees off-centre.

“They’re _hockey gods_ ,” Jonny declares, like somehow that makes sense, except on reflection Sid thinks maybe it does.)

Sid’s more than a little frozen by the time he reaches the corner that he thinks matches the correct one on the map. It leads, as Jonny had indicated, to a dirty back alley behind a hole-in-the-wall sports bar not too far from the arena. He steps gingerly around the trash cans and empty milk crates that are ubiquitous to back alleys, searching for the alcove in the bricks that’s supposed to be here, if this isn’t all some elaborate prank and Jonny Toews isn’t sitting in some comfortable, _warm_ hotel room, laughing at him right now. It takes a few minutes, but eventually he finds the right place: a section of wall that looks like it might have been a door at some point. It's long since bricked up, though -- and there’s a blocky “G” carved inexpertly into one of the bricks, about four feet off the ground.

If Jonny Toews is to be believed, this is the place where, one time, Wayne Gretzky drunkenly puked, thus christening the holiest site in all of hockey or something; Sid has no idea what Jonny was actually going on about after that last round of shots. He has to fight the urge to laugh dismissively at the G and just go to the arena for morning skate and forget about the whole thing. And he would, he really would, but…

(“You have to _believe_ or it doesn’t work, that’s the thing,” Jonny insists. “If you don’t believe in it, it won’t _work_. No, fuck you, Crosby,” Jonny’s index finger in his face is somewhat disconcerting, Sid decides. “Don’t look at me like that; it’s _true_. But you have to _believe_.”)

Sid takes a deep breath, and believes in the hockey gods and the power of Gretzky’s magical vomit as hard as he possibly can; determination is one thing he’s extremely good at.

He pulls out the protein shake and the power bar and sets them carefully on the ground below the G. Then he pulls out the map and turns it over, to where Jonny’s drunken handwriting spells out the words to be said.

Sid looks around carefully, just to be sure there are no reporters or fans with camera-phones around to catch this and put it on Deadspin. He clears his throat.

“By the power of the Great One,” he intones as seriously as he can while feeling like an idiot, “I beg your favor, oh gods of hockey, for my team and myself in this season.”

It’s short and sweet, and Sid feels his determined belief wavering as the protein shake and power bar just sit there. He'd feel better if there were any sort of _visible_ result, but nothing seems forthcoming.

(“You have to leave them there, but if you go back to check later, they _won’t be there_ ,” Jonny’s eyes are wide and unfocused -- and not long after that that he falls asleep at the table, so Sid never gets the chance to suggest that it’s not so much the hockey gods as a hungry homeless person consuming the ‘offerings’.)

Well. He’s done all he can do, really. He sticks the map back in his glove, just in case, then sticks his hands halfway into his pockets, because sticking his hands all the way in his pockets makes him feel unprepared, and heads toward the arena; he books it, too, because it would be dumb to be late to morning skate on account of the completely fictitious hockey gods, and his breath fogs in front of him on every exhale. It’s really fucking cold in Winnipeg.

Sid doesn’t look back.

Within twenty minutes, the ground beneath the G is empty; the protein shake and power bar are nowhere to be seen.

(“You have to leave them a sacrifice sometimes, or they get mad; they stop you from playing,” Jonny says.

Sid wishes he could forget the endless months of dizziness and _not playing hockey_.

“What kind of sacrifice?” Sid asks.)

~*~

That would be all there was to it, if the guys had let Sid go to his hotel room to review the game like he wanted to, but they don’t. Instead, they drag him out to a bar near the hotel and don’t let him get away with pretending to drink. And maybe it’s less Jonny Toews’ fault and more _alcohol’s_ fault - that seems to be the common denominator in all of this - because somewhere in there it just seems logical to admit that actually, he hadn’t been taking a random walk that morning at all.

“I hate Jonny Toews,” he declares to his beer.

Flower eyes him curiously. “They’re not even in our conference,” he says, like that has anything to do with the conversation that Sid started in his head five minutes before he actually said anything.

“Is still early, Sid,” Geno says, and he's trying to be reassuring, Sid knows, but it’s not actually helpful because that’s _not the point_. Winning the game, _that_ would have been reassuring.

“Jonny Toews,” Sid declares, this time less to his beer and more to the collection of empty shot glasses on the table, “Is a _big, fat liar_.” He nods to himself, satisfied with that condemnation. Because it’s true.

“Why are we talking about Toews?” Nealer leans around Flower’s shoulder -- or, well, more _into_ Flower’s shoulder, alcohol-soaked dead weight crushing Flower against Sid; luckily Geno’s shoring up the end of the booth - otherwise none of them would be even partially upright anymore.

“Because he’s a liar and Gretzky’s magic vomit isn’t magic at all,” Sid says despondently, because it’s kind of a let-down. It’s _Gretzky_ , after all, and with enough drinks in him he can sort of see how The Place Gretzky Once Puked might be appealing to the hockey gods. Except it’s clearly not.

And after that Tanger throws a wadded-up napkin across the table at Sid’s head and the whole story comes spilling out -- power bars, protein shakes, hockey gods and all.

There’s a resounding silence for a moment after Sid finishes, the whole group of them pondering.

“Fuck you, Sid,” Kennedy says after a minute, “You didn’t believe hard enough, did you?”

Sid is actually sort of offended. “I left the protein shake!”

“They hockey gods, yes?” Geno asks, and Sid nods. Geno thinks seriously for a moment, then says, simply, “We need to give vodka.”

The table explodes into motion and sound, and Sid can only blink in self-defense while Flower starts yelling about poutine and Tanger starts looking up liquor stores on his phone. He has no idea who actually pays the enormous tab they’ve built up by then, but someone clearly does, because Sid finds himself hustled into his coat and out the door of the bar before he really understands what’s happening.

“No!” He yelps, once he does. “No, guys, come on!” Except no one is listening at that point, and Sid’s actually drunk enough that he’d be having trouble standing up if it weren't for Geno’s arm around his shoulders -- thank you, Russian alcohol tolerance. And, okay, the Russians can tease Geno about being a lightweight, but they are _also Russian_ , so they're probably measuring Geno against an entirely different scale; like that temperature one that has zero where everyone else has negative seven million or something, Sid isn’t a weather... person, whatever. The point is that Sid is drunk enough on the Canadian scale that he really has no hope of stopping the rest of the team once they get going.

It’s dark and fucking _freezing_ and Sid has absolutely no idea how long they spend wandering around Winnipeg at the direction of Tanger’s iPhone or how they manage to pry the map away from him, but eventually they find the dirty little alleyway and pile in, pretty much filling the place with half-drunk/half-frozen hockey players. Sid gives up.

“It’s that one,” he points to the alcove with the G carved into it, and the guys start unloading.

By the time they’re done, the alcove is overflowing with a bizarre collection of offerings. Geno’s promised vodka, of course, as well as a whole box of power bars in a nod to the original instructions from Toews. Then there’s Flower’s poutine and three six-packs of beer and a whole bag of jerky that might possibly be elk or something -- it’s not even labeled. Tanger contributed a mysterious bottle of liquor that had made even Flower shudder -- and, okay, Sid might have actually given in at the convenience store and pulled a bulk variety bag of candy off the shelf. It's keeping company with the family pack of Kraft Dinner, which is also in the alcove, wedged up next to the Molson.

Flower is the one who declares them ready. “Okay, now what do we say?”

Sid turns the map over and hands it to him. He nods, then passes it on so it can make its way around to all of the gathered Penguins. Once it’s been around, Flower folds it neatly and tucks it safely away in Sid’s glove again.

“On three!” Nealer yells, and Sid winces because he can just see what the blogs will have to say, now that it’s _half the team_ out here and not just Sidney Crosby being weird again.

“Even you, Sid,” Geno reminds him, and Sid pouts until Nealer gets to “Two!” because this is really stupid and _doesn’t work_ , but then he lets it go, just takes a breath and joins in. He’s the Captain, after all, and this is sadly not even the strangest thing he’s done for his teammates.

~*~

They win it in Game 6, with Geno tying it up at the end of the second and a tip-in from Nealer with seven minutes to go in the third. Flower somehow manages to stop an absolutely insane shot off Kane in the last few seconds of the game, and that’s _it_ , game over in front of a wildly cheering, packed house at Consol.

~*~0~*~

Possibly the last thing Jonny Toews expects to wake up to, the morning after suffering crushing defeat at the hands of the Pens and watching them hoist the Cup -- well, other than Kaner sprawled across him and half his bed, naked, but he’s very carefully compartmentalizing that for the moment -- is a drunken voicemail from Sidney Crosby, babbling almost nonsensically about how grateful he is that Jonny told him about the Gretzky shrine in Winnipeg. The whole thing is more confusing than Jonny’s hungover brain can handle right then, so he saves the voicemail for later, drinks a glass of water, and lets himself fall right back into bed, not even caring that Kaner snuggles up to his back about three seconds later.

When he wakes up again, Jonny’s still not ready to deal with Kaner, but he’s slightly more ready to try to parse Crosby’s drunken ramblings. And then he _remembers_ , and seriously, what the hell? On the one hand, he can probably mock Crosby forever for actually _believing_ that line of complete bullshit Jonny fed him, but on the other, he’s pretty sure he heard the rest of the Penguins toasting to Gretzky’s puke in the background. Which, Jonny sort of suspected that they were all crazy, but really? And, okay, so maybe Jonny wasn’t completely making up the legend (previously believed by nobody but Midget hockey players of Winnipeg) that Gretzky once puked behind that bar, but he’s pretty sure no one had ever actually gone so far as to _leave offerings to the hockey gods_. Until, apparently, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Who are clearly crazy.

Which is why Jonny figures that he will never tell any of his teammates about how, just before the next season starts, he takes an afternoon off from training and spending time with his family to head downtown with a protein shake and a power bar, feeling like an idiot.

~*~

Of course, Kaner finds out, because Jonny feels guilty that he apparently _handed the Cup_ to the opposing team, and Jonny doesn’t handle guilt well. And once Kaner finds out, Jonny finds himself kidnapped into playing Winnipeg tour guide the next time the Hawks play the Jets -- and trying to convince Sharpy that it isn’t necessary to buy the entire contents of a nearby liquor store to leave _in the alley behind the sports bar_ , just because the Hawks aren’t doing that well; Crosby clearly figured out the joke and must have been playing one right back, which is kind of impressive since Crosby sucks at that kind of thing.

So he kind of resents it when, once they pull off a spectacular win that night against the Jets, the team decides the first toast of the night is to “the hockey gods”, which are not even a _real thing_. The _real thing_ is the way they finally got their acts together, got their passes to connect, found the scoring chances they’d been missing for the last few games. They didn’t win the game because Sharpy offered “the hockey gods” their choice of a fine selection of world liquors. Jonny spends most of the night scowling -- until Kaner sort of passes out in his lap; he’s never been capable of scowling when Kaner is snuffling against his thigh like that.

It grates less and less, as the season goes on, that the guys have added, “To the hockey gods!” to the semi-official rotation of toasts; on the back of several long winning streaks, it feels less like they’re relying on superstition instead of all the _work_ they’ve put in as a team, and more like just another stupid team tradition. So their passes connect when by all rights they _shouldn’t_ , and so sometimes they pull off goals that shouldn’t be possible -- Jonny knows his team is amazing and Kaner's always had eyes in the back of his head. It _cannot_ actually be due to their having offered an obscene amount of alcohol to a defaced brick in a back alley in Winnipeg.

Jonny is forced to reevaluate the situation, though, when against all odds laid at the beginning of the season, and against all laws of physics, the Hawks make it to the Cup playoffs off an OT goal of Sharpy’s that Jonny will swear up and down he shot from _behind_ the goal line - and went in without hitting anything but net.

~*~

Jonny carefully forwards Crosby’s text message of warning to the rest of the team the morning after they bring the Cup home to Chicago; after the year they've just had, the Penguins are fairly well convinced that Gretzky may have actually thrown up _in_ the Cup at some point. The last two words of the text are _be careful_ typed in all caps.

So they’re all extremely careful, except Kaner, who then gets drunk at his bachelor party and tells Gagner; Jonny is tempted to never forgive him when the Oilers take the Cup home two years in a row (Crosby refuses to speak to Kaner, at all, but given that he never really spoke to Kaner anyway, Kaner doesn’t really notice). But Edmonton doesn’t get to keep it, anyway, because Ryan Nugent-Hopkins apparently doesn’t understand that magic, Cup-winning shrines to the hockey gods are not pillow talk, so Landeskog and the Avs take it home the next season.

By then, though, Flower and Tanger are fed up enough with the Western Conference monopolizing the Cup that they spend about half the Pens’ salary cap buying out what seems like every liquor store in Canada to get it back -- which is amazing and wonderful until Sid is forced to kick Geno to the guest room for at least a week the following year. As it turns out, Geno actually _is_ a lightweight compared to the rest of the Russians, and Sid doesn't plan to forgive him until Ovechkin stops sending him stupid camera-phone photos of himself with the Cup.

**Author's Note:**

> There are now TWO podfic versions of this story available! Both of them are wonderful, and you should go love them!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Hockey Gods (Must Be Crazy) [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099364) by [adistantsun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adistantsun/pseuds/adistantsun)
  * [[Podfic] The Hockey Gods (Must be Crazy)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621828) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)
  * [Superstition](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6099484) by [Superstition_hockey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superstition_hockey/pseuds/Superstition_hockey)




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